Great news! At my request, online Frog Watch training is now available again in 2025! Online training was offered online by this organization under the pandemic restrictions through 2023, but was not available in 2024.

Learn to Identify Frogs by Ear –
Online February 19 through March 31, 2025

Re-published online for new season: February 17, 2025

Frogs! Do you hear them? Do you love them? Do you ever wonder what kind they are and how to tell? Well, you are in luck!

I got trained by Frog Watch in 2013 at the Roger Williams Park Zoo (RWPZ) in Providence, RI. I learned how to identify the frogs and toads we have around us in New England by sound. I have looked for a place for you to get trained near Province Lake, with no success. For whatever reason, there are no FrogWatch chapters in New Hampshire, Vermont, or nearby parts of Maine.

The lucky part is that RWPZ moved their training online in 2021 due to the pandemic. They continued in that mode through 2023, but stopped in 2024. I requested that they bring it back in 2025 so that a much larger area beyond Rhode Island could be served, and they did! They are excited to service the northern states that have loads of frogs, but few trained volunteers to keep track of them. There is no telling what the future may bring, so jumping on this now would be prudent.

Click on the icon at right to get to the RWPZ FrogWatch training web site:

FrogWatch training is only available online February 19 through March 31, 2025.


Identifying the frogs is done entirely by listening to them. Their songs are very distinct. There are only a half dozen or so species to be found and they can be learned fairly quickly. The training takes approximately 2 hours to complete, but it is entirely self-paced.

You will rarely actually see most species when doing observations, so you will not need to learn what they look like, unless you want to. This photo is of the one green frog I managed to see one year while I was out observing. (Click it to enlarge.) American toads are the one species that I do commonly see – they seem to like showing themselves off.

If you have any questions, you can always ask by email. The staff is very responsive and helpful. The main thing is that the time to access the training is short, intended to be completed before frog season has started, so it would be best to go ahead and do it soon, while the idea is fresh in your mind.

While FrogWatch would certainly like to have everyone submit observation data, you incur no actual obligation from taking the training. Some people do it just to learn about the frogs, and that is OK. Once you are trained, you get direct access to various reference files that you can use to learn more.

Please note that I am NOT recruiting people just to monitor around Province Lake. While there is benefit to having more people monitoring sites near here, many of you reading this live elsewhere or frequently visit elsewhere. Those other places are likely not already being monitored, so would be excellent places for you to claim for your own. They need to be places you can get to and find at night, that are places you can visit occasionally, rather than just once. You are not tied to any schedule.

Get started and you may find you love doing it! I find it very peaceful out there at night, just me and the frogs; owls and whippoorwills; stars, planets, satellites, and shooting stars; and one night in 2020, even Comet NEOWISE!

If you have questions, you can email the RWPZ FrogWatch Team directly at frogwatch@rwpzoo.org. Please forward this link to anyone you think may be interested.

For additional information, please see this article about FrogWatch in the East Bay Life regional insert in the weekly town newspapers along the east side of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.

I hope you will consider joining this citizen science project. Register directly with FrogWatch to do so. While there is no need for you to contact me about participating, you can email me at province-lake-water@cox.net if you want. Please include "FrogWatch" somewhere in your subject line. I hope to hear from you! It would let me know if my outreach is having any success.


Thanks for your interest,
Norm Dudziak, P.E., I.M.



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